Helping YOU Create Your Perfect Professional Practice

Entries categorized "Film"

November 24, 2007

The foundation for my new professional life and practice here in Northern California. What with re-locating, escorting my mother through her Alzheimers and her eventual passing-on, a first grandbaby, and my husband’s business relocation, I believe having only taken 3 years is not bad. For those of you who are new to this newsletter, besides passing on information about how to create and sustain a successful professional practice I’m also chronicling my journey of relocation from Massachusetts and the creation of a new successful practice in Northern California. The cultural differences between MA and CA, both personally and professionally are so different, it’s a bit like moving to another country. Luckily I’m from this area and am licensed here as an LMFT so it makes the transition a little easier.

I’d love to hear about your experience of relocating a practice!

In starting a new practice, a major part of Phase 1 (see assessment on the right) in setting up a new practice is to be clear about your business structure, location, theoretical orientation and subsequent niche market. I have everything but theoretical orientation and niche market in place, which obviously are critical. Since I’ve created several practices the other stuff was easy. These solutions are all in my first book How to Build and Market Your Mental Health Practice.

Theoretical Orientation

I’m creating a practice based on positive psychology with a focus on well-being. I want clients that’ll pay out of pocket for premium services, since I’m a master clinician (over 30 years of experience, teacher, author etc.) and will not accept insurance assignments. I’m happy to give clients a SuperBill to submit to their insurance company but will not get involved insurance authorization and reimbursement through my office. If you are struggling with whether or not to accept insurance and/or get on insurance panels, let me know and I’ll bump up an article on making that decision higher on my list of articles to re-write.

I have been training and practicing in new modalities and struggling with how to integrate a legal and ethical practice (my licenses ethical guidelines require me to always make a diagnosis and treatment plan) with one that focuses on positive psychology. I initially thought I would simply convert to being a professional life coach, but found that no matter how hard I tried, in my being, I’m a healer and clinician when dealing with individual problems. Having the depth of knowledge that I have about how people work, there was no way I can seperate "therapy" from "life coaching," which is what all the guidelines currently ask for. I find I always come off as a therapist when I make presentations and network with people so moving back to a therapeutic model, albeit a positive psychology one, is the best solution for me. So, until I change, mindfulness and positive psychology is my clinical base. If you’re wondering what Positive Psychology is, there is a brief description by Chris Peterson in the forward of his book A Primer in Positive Psychology by Oxford Press. I also find that positive psychology also works very well in a business coaching model, so I use a lot of these principles when coaching professionals to create successful private practices.

“Positive psychology is the scientific study of what goes right in life, from birth to death and at all stops in between. It is a newly christened approach within psychology that takes seriously the examination of that which makes life most worth living. Everyone's life has peaks and valleys, and positive psychology does not deny the valleys. Its signature premise is more nuanced, but nonetheless important: what is good about life is as genuine as what is bad and, therefore, deserves equal attention from psychologists.”

I’m currently taking a class with Chris who has helped me clarify my theoretical position. I’ll be writing more about positive psychology in future newsletters, and you can visit www.positivepsychologyatwork.com, a blog I’m involved in for more information.

I’ve also trained with John Kabat-Zinn in Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction MBSR and taken an internship to learn how to teach others. I’m starting an Adult Education class at the local Community College for adults and am working with my 3 year-old grandson on teaching MBSR to children. When I understand that process, I’ll offer a class on teaching meditation to children.

An integrated model using positive psychology and mindfulness practice in the creation of Well-Being.

The next step is to create outreach/marketing materials and events and discover what works and what doesn’t work. I see two arms; one is to reach out to professionals, i.e., other therapist and the medical community and the other is to connect with clients directly. I’ve started an online newsletter for the general public at http://lllawless.typepad.com/lifedancing/ and am currently putting the professional package together, i.e., business card, brochure, brochure, website, and outreach letters.

You might want to check my public newsletter out for yourself for more resources. This month's focus is on the value of Gratitude and how to express it during the holidays. There is also information on self-care, holiday spending and how to balance gift giving and spending money with honoring the essence of the holiday, which has less to do with shopping.

Resources and Information

Here is what I have stumbled across this month. Also check out my public newsletter for more timely resources.

Books:

Shyness – How Normal Behavior has Become a Sickness by Christopher Lane

This book provides not only a comprehensive picture of how an ordinary trait became a mental disorder, but also a new and vitally important perspective on anxiety today. Insisting that we're over diagnosed and overmedicated, it describes in precise detail how psychiatrists, public relations consultants, and drug companies successfully turned shyness, self-consciousness, and even introspection into major psychiatric disorders. (Wall Street Journal Nov. 3-4)

Movies:

Rentable by Dec. 18 - Stardust - eye candy and a good escape, enjoy.

To See – Beowulf – I’m always fascinated when a historic myth or story emerges in present day culture. Now that I’ve gotten up to speed on Beowulf I’m off to the movie. I’d be interested in your hit on why now. To get up to speed before you go, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beowulf

Office Help

Sharing Documents with Others – who may be using different software and/or operating systems. Creating PDFs – PDFs or Portable Document Format is the best way to share documents that everybody can open after they download the FREE PDF reader from Adobe. http://www.adobe.com/products/reader/

There are other non-adobe solutions that I’ll explore later.

Virtual Groups - A rather new service is Goggle Groups. When you create a group, for FREE, you can put up documents for others to read. In addition, your group can edit the document as well. I’ve set up groups for business and clients share their work with me via their group. So far it’s working well.

LifeDancing is the name of my classic yacht, a 41 foot Islander Freeport, which I use as my office. She, the boat, is named after my Personal Leadership program and upcoming 2nd Edition book LifeDancing - Managing Life's Movement. Here are a few shots of LifeDancing.